Looking Up: Humans may be on the moon again by 2024

Peter Becker More Content Now

Friday

Oct 11, 2019 at 9:26 AM

If all goes as hoped by NASA, the next human voyage to the lunar surface will occur in 2024, only five years away. That is actually a time frame most of us can dare to grasp. For those of us who remember the Apollo moon landings, it is startling to realize it has been 47 years since humans last made boot prints on the moon.

The mission will be known as Artemis 3.

NASA is actively working towards the next phase of human lunar exploration, with a partnership of government and private space industry. The target location will be near the south pole of the moon, where water ice has been confirmed to exist in the perpetual shadows of lunar craters. Delivered by comets long ago, the ice never melted and evaporated in the searing heat where the sunshine touches the moon.

The ice is looked at as a treasure for future moon astronauts, who hopefully will be able to use it for their own water supply and for creating rocket fuel by splitting apart the hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

This time, according to NASA, the first woman on the moon will be part of the crew.

The potential is great, for the resources the moon can provide and as a testing ground for yet future manned missions to Mars.

What a view they will have. From the lunar poles, the Earth hangs close or right on the horizon, if not blocked by the rugged lunar mountains. The Earth, however, appears four times as large as the moon does from Earth.

Full moon is this Sunday, Oct. 13, 2019. The phase of the moon is always opposite how the Earth appears from there. The Earth reaches “new phase” when the moon is full.

Since the moon orbits the Earth slightly askew from complete alignment with the sun, only on occasion does the moon line up exactly with the Earth and sun. That, of course, is when we have an eclipse.

This Oct. 13 there is no eclipse. The exact time of full moon this time around is 5:08 p.m., EDT.

The full face of the moon will not be 100% bathed in sunlight. Take a look through even a small telescope, using perhaps 60x to 100x. Look at the far southern limb (Note: in a telescope, directions are switched, and north is at the bottom, with south at top). Although the rest of the moon will appear glaringly bright with not a hint of shadow, on the far southern end there will be slight shadowing visible among the mountains and craters of the lunar limb.

At other times of full moon, the moon is out of alignment in the other direction, with the shadowing on the northern limb.

Did you know you can see MORE than half the globe of the moon? Because the moon does a slight wobble as it orbits, the lunar face regularly tilts or “nods” one way or other, in varying directions. This allows in total, about 59% of the whole moon to be visible. This motion is called “libration.”

This is important to selecting the landing site for 2024. Libration could put the Earth completely out of view if they landed too far south. With the planned lunar space station in orbit the moon acting as a relay, however, this could make that a moot point.

This full moon, by the way, is known as the hunter’s moon, the first full moon after harvest moon. This is around the times the leaves have fallen, the deer have fattened and it is time to hunt.

Take a nice autumn evening stroll this weekend, away from street lights, with your path illuminated only by the rising moonlight. This is even better with two. Look at the moon with binoculars, and be sure to share the view with your friends or family.

Keep looking up!

Peter Becker is Managing Editor at The News Eagle in Hawley, PA. Notes are welcome at news@neagle.com. Please mention in what newspaper or web site you read this column.

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